Infosys still hiring; to ramp up headcount this fiscal

Bangalore, Jan 13 (IANS) Allaying fears of slowdown or lay-offs, IT bellwether Infosys Technologies Ltd is still in hiring mode and plans to ramp up its headcount by this fiscal (2008-09), a senior executive said Tuesday.”Though we have said in the beginning of this fiscal that we would hire about 25,000 people, in our estimate our hiring will go up to 27,000 by March 31, 2009,” Infosys head for HRD, education and research T.V. Mohandas Pai told reporters here.

The global software major has also dispatched about 18,000 offer letters to prospective employees for joining the company from the next fiscal (2009-10) beginning April.

“We have another 2,800 offer letters to be made. We will make about 20,000 campus offerings in the next academic year. We will certainly honour all the offer letters,” Pai said after the company declared its robust financial results for the third quarter (October-December) of this fiscal.

Pai, who is also a board member, admitted that the pace of hiring had come down substantially during the third quarter (Q3), resulting in gross addition declining to 5,997 from 10,117 in the previous/second quarter (July-Sept) of this fiscal and 11,683 in the same quarter (Q3) a year ago.

Similarly, net addition also declined to 2,772 in Q3 from 5,927 in the second quarter (Q2) and 8,100 in Q3 year ago.

“The attrition level has declined to 11.8 percent in the third quarter from 12.8 percent in the second quarter and 13.7 percent in the same quarter (Q3) of the last fiscal (2007-08) or in the last 12 months (LTM), which is among the lowest in the IT industry,” Pai asserted.

Of the 3,225 employees who left the company in the third quarter, 1,079 were asked to leave due to non-performance during their internship.

“Involuntary attrition was 1.4 percent. Due to economic conditions and lack of better or alternative opportunities, retention level was better. More over, not much hiring is taking place in the industry due to slowdown,” Pai added.

At the end of December 31, the total number of employees in Infosys and its subsidiaries increased marginally to 103,078 from 100,306 at the end of September 30 (second quarter) and 83,011 in the third quarter of last fiscal (FY 2008).